


Nightmare + Team

by Captain_Kieren



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Hugs, Nightmares, Parent Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016), Protective Jack Dalton (MacGyver 2016), Team Bonding, Team as Family, Whumptober, Worried Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016), i love my dumb spy family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27133634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Kieren/pseuds/Captain_Kieren
Summary: Mac has a nightmare while on a mission. His team comforts him.
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Riley Davis & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Samantha Cage & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Wilt Bozer & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42





	Nightmare + Team

**_A L A S K A N W I L D E R N E S S . . ._ **

**_T E M P E R A T U R E : F R I G G I N ‘ C O L D . . ._ **

Their base camp, nicknamed The Compound, is a loose semi-circle of metal buildings. It’s surrounded by a six-foot chain-link fence, outside of which is a small landing strip large enough for a single bush plane, acting as their exfil point.

The team is exhausted.

Between the typical mission-gone-sideways aches and bruises, they had a hypothermic four-mile hike through knee-deep snow and wind to the Compound because Mac was forced to rip pieces off their transport to put together a makeshift… You know what – never mind. He’s too tired to think about it anymore.

When the Compound comes into sight, Mac wants to cry from relief. He’s pretty sure Bozer really is sniffling – but that could be because his nose is burned red and dripping from the cold.

The fence is stuck shut, probably frozen, so Mac struggles for a few seconds before Jack appears beside him, offering to help. In the end, they have to kick and scrape some of the ice away for the gate to swing open. But as soon as it does, they all pile into the main building, Riley shoving the door closed behind them.

“God, it’s _c-cold_ in here!” Cage complains, shivering.

“I’ll get a fire started,” Mac offers, making a beeline for the wood-burning fireplace nearby. There’s a stove, too, and probably electric heating somewhere, but that all takes a bit more time to get going when it hasn’t been used in months. The stove’s piping could be frozen over, and the electric is attached to a generator, which he’ll need to refill with gasoline and start up in order to use it.

Bozer comes with him. Not so much to help—after all, there’s only so much you can do to help someone start a fire—but rather just to sit near him. “Hey, Mac,” he says, teeth chattering. “You remember that time, back home, when we decided to stay the night in the Lab?”

Mac grins, or tries to. His face is pretty cold, so it’s hard to make facial expressions. Still, he laughs thinking back on them as twelve-year-olds playing survivalist in their treehouse. “Yeah. For some reason, we thought it would be a good idea to do that in the middle of February.”

Bozer laughs, hugging his knees for warmth. “That sucked so bad, man! It was so cold I thought they’d find us frozen like a caveman in a block of ice.”

Mac snickers as he pours accelerant on the stack of newspaper and kindling at the bottom of the fireplace. “Yeah, that was an awful idea.”

“What,” Jack says from across the room. He has decided to ditch his soaking-wet parka, hanging it on the hook by the door. “Mac, couldn’t you have made a...I don’t know…a portable, smoke-free heat source from, like, leaves and shoe laces?”

Bozer chuckles while Mac rolls his eyes.

“I was, like, _twelve_ , Jack.”

“Okay, okay.” Jack lifts his hands in surrender. “All I’m saying is I find it very difficult to imagine you letting our very good friend Bozer be cold all night, despite that big, swollen brain of yours. I’m surprised at you, pal.”

“Yeah, me too,” Cage agrees, kicking off her boots and socks. “Poor Bozer.”

Boze barks a laugh, and at the same time, the fire blooms to life.

Mac gets up and gives them all a flat stare. Jack returns it with a big, cheesy grin, and Cage just presses her lips together, hiding a smirk. “Oh, no. Go on, keep heckling,” he says, crossing his arms. “See where it gets you.”

“All right, guys,” Riley says, blessedly mature, from her perch at the wooden table beside the cold stove. She has her laptop set up, its screen casting a bluish light on her face. “We’ve got Wi-Fi.”

“Ya-hoo!” Jack claps his hands, sauntering over to the nearest bed (a steel frame, thin mattress, and hospital-grade blankets). He crashes down, causing a sound so startling Mac is sure it must be broken. “Nice work, Riles.”

“Yeah, good job,” Mac says, smiling. “Any word from Matty?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Riley says, perhaps a little boastfully. “I got comms up, too.”

Jack whistles and Bozer gives her a polite, little golf clap and inclines an invisible cap to her.

“That’s got to be some kind of record,” Cage comments, sinking onto her own bed.

“Well, what can I say?” Riley says, cracking her knuckles. “I’m _good_.”

They share a good laugh as the fire slowly warms the house. Mac stays nearby, feeding in progressively larger pieces of wood until there’s a healthy fire burning away in there. Even so, his fingers still have that burning thing going on, when your hands have been cold and then suddenly you plunge them into hot water. That thing. Like his blood is thawing out.

“Hey, hoss,” Jack says, heaving himself off the possibly-broken bed. “Why don’t you let me babysit the fire for while?”

“I’m all right,” Mac assures him, rubbing his hands together. And he is. He’s tired, yes, and hungry, and still pretty cold on the inside, but he’s already feeling way better than he was half an hour ago.

“Yeah, I know, but here I am laying on my back while you’re doin’ all the work. You’re makin’ me look bad.” He elbows Mac out of the way so he’s forced to move, so he’d might as well undress like everyone else has.

Matty said there’s a big storm rolling in. Blizzard-type conditions, so exfil is being postponed for a few days. No biggie. There’s enough firewood, food, and water in this camp to last them a few weeks, at least. Now it’s just a matter of staying entertained and keeping the fire going.

And in the interest of the first thing, Bozer has taken the liberty to scour through every filing cabinet, every desk drawer, and every shelf in this house to find some form of fun. It’s not a big house (just one floor with three rooms) but there are an impressive number of nooks-and-crannies to dig through.

Eventually, Riley gets up to help him search and when they’re done, there’s a frankly surprising stack of doo-dads to waste their time with. Jack’s favorite is the acoustic guitar found in the storage closet. He spends the next hour or so plucking the strings and turning the keys, attempting it to tune it.

Cage is shocked and delighted to find a 1990s GameBoy Color in the pile. The light-grey cartridge stuck in the back is some old Mario game, and her face splits in a bright grin. “Wow, I haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid!” She pops in some new batteries, flops onto her bed, and turns the game on, filling the house with the jagged 8-bit music of an old-school video game.

“Hey, Mac!” Bozer says, tossing him something to him from the pile.

Mac catches it, much to his own surprise. It’s a clear, plastic box the size of his palm, inside of which is about thirty paper clips. Mac laughs and opens the lid. “ _Nice,_ ” he says, taking out one of the paperclips and easing backwards against the wall. “Thanks, Boze.”

“No problem, man.”

Mac sighs, feeling his muscles relax as he starts folding the little piece of metal into a new shape. He thinks it might be a snowflake, but he isn’t sure yet. He never knows until it’s done.

The house is pleasantly warm now, and they’re all wearing matching Phoenix-issue thermal long johns and thermal sweaters, all a lovely shade of gray.

“Look at us,” Jack says after tossing on another log. “In our matching jammies, sittin’ around, hanging out. It’s a like slumber party.”

Mac snorts. “I bet you wish you had a DVD player and your John Wayne movie collection right about now, huh, Jack?”

Jack makes a pained howl, clutching his heart. “Don’t even mention it!” he says. “The educational opportunity you youngins are missing out on right now is, frankly, tragic.”

“Well, hey,” Riley says, about to turn her laptop around. “I’ve got Wi-Fi so—”

She stops, however, as three voices loudly SHUSH her at the same time.

Shrinking back into her chair and turning the laptop back to her, Riley gives them an awkward smile then hides behind her computer.

“I’m gonna forget that ever happened,” Jack says crossly. “I get it. You’re young, you don’t appreciate the classics. But someday, you’ll look back on this and _wish_ you’d have watched John Wayne.”

“Right, Jack,” Cage says, her face flashing colors from the video game. “Of course, we will.”

Mac extends his leg, kicking the back of Jack’s shoe so he turns around. “And, for the record, I _have_ seen all those movies. Thirty times. You made, remember?”

“Yeah, and you’re a better man for it.”

* * *

Bozer cooks them a hot, three-course, meal of shredded beef in barbeque sauce, seasoned black beans, applesauce, and hot tea. To be fair to Boze, everything in this place is either canned or vacuum-packed in an MRE, so his options were limited, but until a few minutes ago, Mac was seriously considering eating his gloves, so yeah, this is great.

After their “family dinner” as Jack calls it, a few of them brave the blizzard to use the outhouse, coming back covered in snow and shivering.

Mac is wiped. Apparently more exhausted than the others because he’s the first to say goodnight and fall into his cot, tugging the blanket over his face. “Hey,” he grumbles tiredly. “Whoever goes to bed last, set an alarm on my phone for about an hour so I can get up and stoke the fire.”

“Will do, Mac,” Cage assures him.

“Yeah, just get some rest, buddy,” Jack says.

The team is quiet after that, respectfully keeping the volume down so Mac can rest. It wouldn’t matter if they were shouting and blaring music, though. He’s so drained that he falls asleep in seconds, lulled by the warmth and his team all around him.

It’s funny, but there are times when Mac could swear he sleeps better on missions than he does even back at home. There’s something centering about having one job to do, one thing to think about and a perfect reason to block out everything else. And something equally calming about knowing his family is here. Jack, Boze, Riley – even Cage, the girl next door.

Maybe it sounds childish to think, especially considering their current circumstances, but he can’t help but feel like nothing could possibly hurt him now.

* * *

_“Oh, MacGyver. Don’t be such a silly-billy. There’s_ always _something that can hurt you…”_

* * *

Mac lurches up in bed, snapping his mouth shut just short of screaming in panic.

The house is dark. All around him, the walls are rattling from the wind outside, so the blizzard must have rolled in. Other than that, it’s quiet and the lights are out and everyone is in bed. Mac scrambles for his phone. The greenish light blinds him when he turns it on. The clock reads 12:31 AM and there’s an alarm set to go off in forty-two minutes.

He sets it down, drawing his knees up to his chest, and tries to get a good, deep breath.

In the recesses of his mind, Murdoc is still whistling _Home on the Range,_ and his spine tingles at the silent sound of it. His right arm is stinging and he rubs at it, but there’s nothing there. So, why can he still feel the IV in his skin?

Somewhere in the room, there’s a shifting noise, and the part of Mac that’s still half-asleep jolts, expecting to see that grinning face appear out of the darkness.

But it’s not Murdoc. It’s Jack. And he’s not grinning.

“Mac?” he asks groggily, sitting up. “Somethin’ wrong, buddy?”

“No,” he answers, probably too quickly.

Jack frowns and rubs his eyes. “You sure? You look spooked.”

“I’m not,” he lies. “I just…”

Outside, something metal is caught in the wind and _clangs_ against the side of the house as the storm takes it. The sound makes Mac jerk again, then inwardly scold himself for getting so jumpy. What kind of behavior is this for a bomb disposal expert? Or a secret agent with years of field experience? It was just a nightmare!

Except that it wasn’t just a nightmare. It was a memory.

“You just…?” Jack stares at him in the dark, waiting for him to finish. When he doesn’t, Mac might as well have physically gotten up and flipped the big, red button on his back, reading _Papa Bear._

Jack stirs, and Mac hears blankets swishing in the gloom, then there’s an extra weight on his bed, and Jack is next to him, looping an arm around him shoulders.

“Nightmare?”

Mac sighs heavily. “Sort of. Yeah.”

“Sort of?” Jack tilts his head. “What do you mean, sort of?”

“It was…” _No secrets with Jack,_ he reminds himself. It was their age-old promise. No secrets. Still, he heaves another deep breath. “It was more of a memory, really,” he admits.

“What about?”

“Murdoc.”

He feels Jack stiffen beside him. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the arm around Mac tightens a bit. “Ah,” Jack says. “Yeah, that’d do it.”

Mac tries to laugh; really, he does. But it just won’t come out as anything but a shaky sigh. “I know it’s stupid—”

“Hey, now,” Jack cuts in strictly. “It ain’t stupid. Nothing about what Murdoc did to you is stupid, _capisce_?” Mac can hear the frown in his voice. His angry eyebrows are audible right now. “You’ve been through hell, brother. I can’t blame you for being a little skittish so far from home.”

“It’s not that,” Mac says, slouching to rub a hand across his eyes. “I think it’s… Something about this place— _reminds_ me of it. You know? The…the dark. And the cold. And all the metal.” He feels himself shiver, and Jack must too, because he scooches closer and pulls Mac tighter against him, as if to remind him he’s here. He’s not letting anything to happen to him. Not ever again.

“I don’t get it,” Mac mumbles. “Murdoc kidnapped me months ago. I’ve never—well, I haven’t had nightmares about it for a long time. Why now?”

“I don’t know, Mac,” Jack says softly. “Maybe it’s this place, like you said.” He looks around, studying the metal roof and walls. The sound of metal. Even the smell of it. Suddenly, everything about this place feels cold, even though it’s warm. “Maybe it’s…bringing back the memories or something.”

“Yeah,” Mac agrees, raking a hand through his hair. “Well, I’d appreciate it if it wouldn’t.”

The noise Jack makes is close to a laugh, but not quite. “I feel you, buddy,” he says, squeezing Mac again. “But listen, I think you oughta’ cozy back on up in bed and try to get some more shut eye. We’re all pretty exhausted, especially you, and I doubt that’s doing you any favors.”

“There’s no point, at least not at the moment.” Mac gestures to his phone. “I’m supposed to get up in about a half hour to put wood on anyway. Might as well stay up.”

“Nah, now don’t you worry about that. I’ll stay up, tend the fire, and set the alarm for the next person, all right? You get some sleep.”

“That’s not fair to you, Jack. You need rest too.”

“I’ll be perfectly A-OK, all right? And I’ll be a lot more A-OK when I know you’re rested enough to fix anything we need to survive out here if it breaks in this blizzard.”

Mac grimaces, but there’s no point in trying to argue anymore. “You sure?” he asks one more time. In response, Jack gets up and presses Mac down in the bed, all but tucking him in.

“I’m sure. Go to sleep.”

As he starts to walk away, Mac sits up.

“Thanks, Jack,” he says quietly. In the dark, Jack’s smile is cut with shadows, but it’s still visible as daylight.

“No problemo, kid.”

* * *

It’s thirty minutes later; Jack is poking the cinders in the fireplace, rearranging the wood to make room for new logs, and dreaming of falling back into bed as soon as he’s done. He plops one cedar chunk in, then another, listening to Bozer’s grinding snore. On the bright side, at least _his_ snoring isn’t constant like it was for some of the guys in the army. They sounded like freakin’ chainsaws. Bozer’s kind of goes on and off throughout the night.

That was the good thing about being partnered up with Mac in Afghanistan. Well, _one_ of the good things – other than the whole “bros for life” perk they got out of it. But _one_ of the good things is that Mac has never snored. Quiet as a mouse, that boy. Quieter back then than he is now. Back in the army, before they got real close, Mac almost never initiated conversation. He could sit for hours just fiddling with a paper clip in silence or with his face buried in a book. Jack never understood that, but then he’s an extrovert. A real people-person.

Maybe it’s that interpersonal intuition he’s got going on that makes him notice the change in the room – even before Mac makes a noise.

It’s like a hush falls over the house. Weird, right? Considering it was already quiet. But this ain’t a lack-of-noise kind of hush. It’s more like a…like the guy next to you suddenly went real still and now you’re holding your breath. That kind of hush.

Jack turns at the exact moment Mac starts screaming.

Cage is the first to shoot out of bed. She goes from laying down, fast asleep, to standing up in about the time it takes Jack to blink. “ _What’s happening!_ ” She yells, startled and disoriented.

Riley and Bozer are next, but their waking is much less abrupt – and far less graceful.

Riley jumps so bad she falls right onto the floor, still tangled in the sheets. Boze does pretty much the same thing, only more upside-down. His feet are still on the bed when his head hits the floorboards.

“Stand down!” Jack tells Cage, who is so wild-eyed he half fears she might go diving for her gun. “It’s just Mac! He’s havin’ another bad dream!” The command seems redundant though, since Mac has already sat up and stopped screaming. He’s rocking slightly, clutching his right arm. Cage is gaping at him, her face drained of color, like she’s afraid he’s going to break into a thousand little pieces.

“ _Another?_ ” Riley asks, sounding frazzled. “I wasn’t aware he already had one!”

“Yeah,” Bozer agrees, struggling to free himself from the blankets. “This is the first time I’m hearing of it.”

“Mac?” Jack asks, crouching next to him. “Hey, you hear me, kiddo?”

Eerily, Mac doesn’t respond at first. His eyes are faraway and he’s shaking, and that’s how Jack knows for sure it was another Murdoc dream. After the kid was taken, and after they got him back, this is the same look he was wearing when Jack showed up at the hospital. This same glazed, practically catatonic stare.

“Mac?” Gingerly, he reaches out, touching his shoulder.

Mac startles, bright-blue eyes wide with alarm for a half of a second – before his face locks down like a security shutter slamming closed.

His forehead is slick with sweat as he takes in the fact that he is very much the center of attention. “Sorry I woke you,” he says, his voice hoarse from the scream but injected with forced levity. “I, uh…guess I had a nightmare.”

“You guess?” Riley says, dropping onto the edge her bed with a hand on her heart.

“Mac,” Bozer says, finally managing to untangle himself and get to his feet. He looks about as worried as Jack feels. “You okay?”

Mac gives him a forced smile and a wave of the hand. “Totally.”

Literally not one of them buys it.

“Can I ask you something?” Cage chimes in, crossing her arms as she looks at Mac with those weird, mind-reader eyes she gets. “How did you ever get to be a spy if you’re this bad of a liar?”

Mac isn’t fazed, but he gives her a withering look. “I’m not lying,” he grumbles. “It was just a stupid dream, and I’m fine. Now—” He looks at everyone around him. “Can everyone just go back to bed, please?”

Riley and Bozer exchange a look, but appear ready to give in. But before they can, Jack interrupts.

“Yeah, let’s everyone just go on back to bed,” he says with a smile. “But first, do y’all mind if I have a second alone with our boy?”

“Jack—” Mac complains, pinching the bridge of his nose.

But Jack is already herding the others out of the room, starting with Cage and using her like a big industrial shovel on the front of a snow plow to shove Riley and Bozer into the kitchen. There’s no door separating the two rooms, but there is a thick curtain meant to keep as much warmth in the front room as possible. Jack yanks the cord keeping it open so the curtain drapes over the archway, creating at the illusion of privacy.

Then, he turns back to Mac.

The kid is giving him a tired, flat stare that says _I am not happy._

Jack is intimately familiar with this look. It’s the same one Mac would be wearing whenever, back in the sandbox, he would roughly kick Jack awake in his bunk to tell him to roll over and stop snoring. This was before they were friends, of course, and more often than not, Jack would growl and intentionally fall asleep with his chin tucked into his neck – a surefire way to make sure he kept on snoring good and loud.

The mornings after those exchanges were always met with a highly-irritable, sleep-deprived Mac wearing this very same expression on his face.

And if looks could kill…

You know, looking back, Jack feels sorta bad about that…

“Now look,” he starts before Mac can grouse at him, holding up his hands in deference. “We can do the whole ‘I’m fine, Jack. Stop worrying. It’s totally normal to wake up screaming in a cold sweat’ thing, if you want. But considering that it’s, like, one o’clock in the morning and we got a kitchen full of cold, tired agents waiting to go back to bed, I’d recommend we just skip straight to the part where you tell me what’s goin’ on in that big brain of yours.”

He ends his appeal with a smile, but Jack doesn’t honestly think it’s going to work. At least, he expects to have to argue a _little_ bit more.

But Mac must be too groggy to argue. Or maybe he really just wants to talk about it.

With a sigh, the kid nods and drops his head. “Fine,” he mumbles.

“Really? I mean—great. Good. Cool.” Jack gestures to the bed. “Care if I sit?”

Mac shakes his head and moves his legs so there’s room. The mattress squeaks under Jack’s additional weight but, other than that, there’s no noise for several seconds.

Jack decides to take the first leap. “What’s goin’ on, brother?” he asks quietly, eyeing Mac – the drops of sweat on his face, the faraway look in his eyes, the way he’s still messing with his right arm, like it hurts. “Now, I’ve known you for a long time, Mac. You and I have tangled with a lot of real creepy a-holes in our day. And I don’t blame you one bit for being freaked out; Murdoc is one scary son of a bitch, but… If you’re havin’ a hard time moving past what happened, you’ve gotta tell me, Mac. Or tell someone. Matty. Or Riley. Or Bozer. Someone.”

“You’re right.” Mac rubs his neck, frowning at the blanket. “I haven’t moved on. I thought I had. I mean, like you said, we’ve been through some stuff, but…”

“But…something’s different about this,” Jack ventures.

“Yeah…”

“Well, of course, it’s different, Mac. I bet you can count on one hand the number of times you’ve been kidnapped. Not to mention how many times it was from your own home, under the noses of everyone who cares about you. Murdoc’s guys zapped you, dragged you away, and drugged you, and there wasn’t a damn thing you could to stop them.”

“Is this supposed to be helping? Because it isn’t.” Mac rubs his arms like they’re cold, and Jack notices they’re pimpled with goosebumps.

“What I’m saying,” Jack emphasizes, pushing Mac’s hands down so they stop that incessant rubbing. “—is that Murdoc made you feel helpless.”

Mac stares at him, then drops his head with a faint nod of agreement.

“That’s what your problem is, man,” Jack says certainly. “You’re so used to being the cool, brainy, hero who swoops in and solves everyone else’s problems with…I don’t know, shaving cream and a CD player.”

Mac huffs a sort of small, breathy laugh.

Encouraged, Jack goes on. “What you’re _not_ used to is being the one who needs saving. Especially without a team there to back you up.” Guilt squirms in his chest like a ball of snakes. “And that was on me.”

Mac’s head snaps up, his eyes dark. “No, it’s not.”

“Hey, I’m not trying to argue right now—”

“Jack, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Not all of it,” Jack agrees, talking over Mac even as he tries to argue. “But the fact that you were alone when it happened? Yes, brother, that was on me. I’m your overwatch and your friend, and I ignored the _six_ times you tried calling me.”

“We were having a fight,” Mac reminds him.

“Yeah? So what? Mac, I’ve been in this business long enough to know that you don’t ever, _ever_ , want to take people for granted. Because any moment, any second, might be their last. Or your last. Now, I’ve been wise to that for a long time, so it was pretty damn dumb of me to ignore you. And because of that—” He gestures with both arms at the dark, cold room around them, hung thick with the gloom of misery.

Mac shakes his head, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “It’s not your fault,” he repeats, apparently too tired to think of anything else to say.

“Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one. But my point is, the last way I’d ever describe you is ‘helpless,’ and you’re never alone. You got that?” He takes Mac by the shoulder so he looks, and then Jack gives him an encouraging smile. “You got me, kid. Always. And you’ve got Riley, and Bozer, and Matty, and Cage, and all of us. All right?

“We’re not gonna let anything happen to you. And even if something does happen—cause let’s face it; this job is dangerous—we’re all gonna fight like hell to get you back. We’d track you the whole way across the world and back again. _I’d_ look for you forever, dude, you know that.”

“I know you would.”

“So would we.” Riley’s voice comes from the doorway to the kitchen. When Mac and Jack look up, they find the rest of their team standing sheepishly in the archway.

“Come on, guys. Didn’t we specifically ask for alone-time?” Jack asks good-naturedly.

“Well, yeah, but you didn’t think we weren’t gonna listen in, did you?” Bozer says, raising an eyebrow. “We’re literally spies.”

Mac chuckles quietly. What _did_ they expect, really?

“Mac,” Riley says, crossing the room. She shoulders Jack out of the way, taking his spot on the edge of the bed (with some considerable grumbling), and lays her hand on top of Mac’s. “We’re here for you.”

“Yeah,” Bozer agrees, falling down next to her with a big smile. “We’ve got your back, always!”

Mac has never been good at this. This fuzzy-feely-good stuff. He’s not a hugger, but he has very little choice in the matter.

First, Riley pulls him against her, then Bozer closes his arms around the two of them, and then Jack goes, “aww! Family hug!” and adds his powerful arms to the mix. The last one to join in is Cage, who is about as cuddly as Mac, but she doesn’t have a choice either. Jack tugs her in by her sleeve, and pretty soon it’s five secret agents hugging it out on one bed.

And to his credit, Mac holds out as long as he can without struggling, but pretty soon it gets to be a little ridiculous.

“Guys,” Mac gasps out, suffocating from the body warmth and the four pairs of arms locked around him. “We’re going to break the bed.”

“Shhh,” Jack hushes, petting Mac’s hair. “Let it happen, dude.”

“Yeah, Mac, we’re comforting you,” Bozer chimes in, nuzzling happily. He _is_ a cuddler. Always has been.

Against his cheek, Riley is laughing. “Don’t make it weird, Mac. Besides, I’m as trapped as you are.”

“Okay, okay, if I say I’m not scared of Murdoc anymore, can we all just go back to bed?” Mac chokes out, squirming.

“I’m game,” Cage says lazily. She’s about as excited about the physical contact as he is.

“Great! I’m good, guys, really!” he assures them. “I’m all good. Now can you—” He pushes at Jack, who is definitely the biggest weight pressing on him. “—let go so I can breathe?”

Cage peels away with ease, then Bozer (a bit more grudgingly), and then Riley elbows Jack, forcing him to let her go, and Mac is free. He rubs his chest, which feels slightly crushed.

“Thanks, guys,” he says sincerely. “I mean it. I know I can always rely on my team, no matter what.” Then, softer, looking at each of the faces in the room with him, he adds, “You guys are my family. I really appreciate you being there for me.”

“Damn straight, man,” Jack puts in helpfully. “We got your back.”

Mac smiles. “I know.” And he does.

Then, Jack gives him a sheepish grin and holds out his arms. “You wanna hug it out again?”

“No!” Mac and Cage say in unison.

Mac flips over, yanking the covers over his head before his team can tackle him again. He hears them laugh through the blankets, and gradually, the noise in the cabin trails off as everyone goes back to sleep.

Mac drifts off eventually, as well. He sleeps the rest of the night in peace. No more nightmares.


End file.
